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# LIBRARY OF CONGRKSS. II 



# / # 

I UXITKlt STATElS of AMERICA. \ 

w f 



OUR AGE, 




AN ADDEESS, 



DELIVEEED SEPTEMBER 16th, 1859, 



BY JAMES W. WALL, ESQ. 



Jit % llciu lustg JgriaUttral ^tate |air, 



HELD AT ELIZABETHPORT. 



PUBLISHED BY REQUEST OF THE STATE AGEICULTURAL SOCIETY. 




PHILADELPHIA: 

KING & BAIRD, PRINTERS, 607 SANSOM STREET. 
1859. 



^'- 



"Agricola incurvo terrain dimovit aratro: 
Hinc aimi labor ; hinc patriam parvosque neiiotes, 
Sustinet; hinc amienta bourn, meritosque juveucos. 
Nee requies, quin aut pomis exuberet annus, 
Ant fcetu pecorum, aut Cerealis mergite culmi ; 
Proventuque oneret sulcos atque horrea vincat. ' ' 

Georgics, Lib. 2d, p. 113. 

"The husbandman cleaves the earth with the crooked plough; hence the 
labor of the year ; hence he sustains the country and his little offspring ; 
hence his herds of kkie and deserving steers. Nor is there any intermission, 
but the year either abounds with apples, or with the breed of the flocks, or 
with bundles of the stalks of Ceres ; loads the furrows with increase, or 
overstocks the barns." 



Pr. ^rtsibciit Hub 6nitlciiun of i\t BMt 
^griculturnl Sotittj, 



Farmers of 'New Jersey: 

The duty devolving upon me to-day, through the 
indulgent partiality of your Association, is one, that 
had I consulted my calmer judgment, and relied less 
upon my impulses, perhaps I should have declined. 
Inexperienced as I am in all the more practical work- 
ings of the gentle art of the husbandman, it certainly 
does appear the most startling presumption for me to 
stand up in the midst of those whose lives have been 
devoted to its culture, or whose tastes have been 
directed to its study and encouragement, for the pur- 
pose of intruding my crude thoughts upon a subject, 
with which experience and cultivation have so famil- 
iarized them. 

But in accepting this invitation, I did so, fully 
conscious of my own deficiencies, but animated by 
generous impulses, which made me feel that I should 
be false to my Jersey lineage, false to the examples 
that have gone before me, and forgetful of the teach- 
ings of one, whose loyal heart was always full of love 
for New Jersey, did I refuse to lend my aid, feeble as 
it might be, to an Association that has done so much, 
and is destined to do still more, for the best interests 
of this my native State. 

Had this Association accomplished nothing, save the 
simple institution of this annual agricultural State 



6 

festival, it would have deserved the highest honors and 
the most lasting remembrance. But when to this we 
add, the devotion and energy manifested by those who 
originated, or have since enrolled themselves in it, the 
incalculable benefits that through such devotion and 
energy have sprung from its organization, the encourage- 
ment it has given to agriculture throughout the State, 
the stimulus to exertion it has created, the generous 
rivalry it has awakened ; then and not till then are we 
able to realize fully the immense advantages conferred 
upon the State by its organization. 

In view of all these things, how is if? and why is 
iti that our legislation has done so little to foster an 
Association whose sole object is the benefit of the State; 
and all of whose energies have been most perseveringly 
expended in advancing and encouraging her best inte- 
rests, and providing for her future welfare and prospe- 
rity. Not thus did the Roman state reward the efforts 
of those whose labors to improve her agricultural re- 
sources she thought worthy of the laurel crown, and of 
the thanks of a Roman Senate. Not thus did a Roman 
magistracy acknowledge the interests of the state in 
this gentle art, when yearly her high official functiona- 
ries went in solemn processsion to the temples of the 
gods, and sometimes to the fields, to offer up prayers 
for the safety of the crop, or of the cattle, and for suc- 
cess in every agricultural undertaking. I would, as a 
Jerseyman, that this question had not to be asked; but 
the answer is an easy one, and I give it to you in all 
frankness. It is because you, the independent yeomanry 
of the State, who own and till its broad and fertile acres, 
have shut your eyes to the immense influence which 
your intelligence, your numbers, your social position, 



and your important interests would enable you to wield \ 
in the political affairs of the State, if you would only^ 
determine to exercise it in a proper manner. 

The legislation of the past has done nothing, literally 
nothing, for the agricultural interests of New Jersey. 
That omission has mainly grown out of the indifference 
and neglect of the very class most injured by it. ( The 
past you cannot redeem, but the future is with j/o?^^the 
men of the plough, the men of toil, the cultivators of 
the soil you own. You can, with the awakened power ^^ 
which has so long slumbered within you, mould and 
shape, and direct the future legislation of the State as 
you choose. The hammer of Odin is in your hands : 
and as the stroke of that of the Teutonic mythology is 
said to have produced convulsions upon the earth's sur- 
face, so political power in your hands, if wielded in a 
high and holy purpose, shall shake terribly that old 
system of inert and useless legislation, which has so long- 
cursed the State. 

You have committed to your care the most important 
interests — interests which only need judicious and foster- 
ing protection at the hands of the State, to develop rich 
sources of wealth, that will add materially to our pre- 
sent and all future prosperity. It has been your 
fault heretofore, and it will be much more your fault 
hereafter, if you neglect to place high-minded, intelli- 
gent men from your own ranks in our legislative halls, 
who will look somewhat more after your own inte- 
rests, and consequently the real interests of the State, 
which are always advanced, when that art is encouraged, 
of which you are the living masters. 

Send hereafter to your legislative halls, men who affi- 
liate with you, men who drive the plough, and wield 



8 

the scythe, and delve the earth ; men who have an inte- 
rest in the soil they till; upon whose clear common sense 
intelligence you can confide ; whose patriotism has been 
tested, and whose honesty you know. 

United in action as in purpose, you have it in your 
power to send men to our legislative halls who will, by 
wholesome legislation, build up the agricultural inte- 
rests of your State, open up once more its soil to geolo- 
gical research; who will establish agricultural schools, 
endowed with State patronage; and promote by all hono- 
rable and judicious means the cultivation of those sci- 
ences which have already done so much for agriculture, 
by the continued expansion of its field of operations, 
and the wondrous increase of its means of usefulness. 

It is for you to bring back the political contests of 
New Jersey to the old, high and honorable standard, 
when 

' ' Worth made the man, 
And want of it, the fellow." 

You can, if you choose, hft them up from their fallen 
state, and place them on their former high vantage 
ground. Your very position makes you conservative. 
If you have not large possessions to guard, you have 
the will and the capacity to accumulate, in a country 
where a pair of hands has been the basis of many a 
fortune. Your inheritance is not a life of toil and a 
pauper's obsequies; but the fruits of industry protected 
by freedom. You are the " kmd-ivelire^'' the potentialities 
of the State, whose labor " places a roof over your heads, 
a chicken in your pot, and yearly adds a field to your 
farms." Your associations have removed you from the 
contaminating political atmosphere of cities ; and you 



will bring back again to our political contests what they 
so much need, honesty of purpose, integrity of motive, 
and freedom of action. According to the ancient my- 
thology, "Labor stood still, when Pluto broke out of hell." 

" Turbatur Lipare, stupuit fornace relicta 
Mulciber, et trepidus dejecit fulmina Cyclops." 

We desire that honest labor in our day, whenever the 
Pluto of political corruption and degeneracy breaks 
loose upon the political world, shall not imitate its pro- 
totype of the ancient, by standing still ; but will scourge 
back to its den, so infamous, yet so potential a divinity. 

Farmers of New Jersey ! the future is in your hands. 
Will you so impress your influence upon it, that the 
Broad Seal of your State, — which emblemizes, with its 
horse head, its triad of ploughs, its cornucopia full to 
the overflow, and Liberty watching over all, the com- 
plet eone-ness of State and agricultural interests, — shall 
hereafter stand forth in broader and fuller relief? Let 
it be to you on your banner, like the fkr-famed cross upon 
thatof Constantino— having under it as he did, the motto, 
" In hoc signo vinces," — "in this sign shall ye conquer.' 

" Liberty and Prosperitf/ /" this is the legend, as we 
read it in the scroll upon which the shield of your 
Broad Seal rests. These should be your watchwords. 
^'- Liberty r The liberty achieved for you on your 
world-renowned battle fields by Jersey farmers, and the 
sons of farmers, who literally left their ploughs in the 
furrow to hasten to the field. '■^Prosperity!" The 
prosperity that follows the iron coulter of your ploughs, 
with which " you tickle the Jersey soil until it laughs 
with an abundant harvest." " Prosperity /" The pros- 
X^erity of the noble art you cultivate, that spreads the 



10 

great arcl bountiful table, upon which so many of your 
brethren in our own and sister States depend for their 
daily food ; and that ever, with inexhaustible supply, 
keeps feeding all the other branches of industry. 

Farmers of New Jersey ! Once more have you gath- 
ered from every section of the State, to keep your an- 
nual agricultural festival and jubilee. 

Greece, for a thousand years, summoned to her Olym- 
pian festivals, beneath the graceful porticos and shady 
groves of Elis, the men from every portion of the world 
who bore the Grecian name. They gathered there, from 
every kingdom under heaven, — from the islands of the 
sea, and from the colonies that her hands had planted, — 
to greet once more their ancient mother, and meet like 
loving children round the family altar, to kindle afresh 
the noblest feelings of the soul. The Grecian Olym- 
piad was a common bond of alliance and reunion. 
While ostensibly it seemed but an exhibition for the 
display of physical vigor, in the numerous games that 
pleased the public eye and nerved and stimulated the 
youthful ambition to excel, it had really a much more 
elevated object. It was, in fact, the grand central 
point, where philosophers, sophists, statesmen, poets, 
and husbandmen assembled, that they might compare 
observations, and devise the ways and means of facili- 
tating intercourse, and of diffusing useful knowledge ; 
while one or more delivered discourses upon the pro- 
gress of civilization and humanity. 

So here. New Jersey assembles at this, her annual 
agricultural Olympiad, all who wear the Jersy name. 
You have come up to-day from the ocean seaboard, 
from the rich alluvial districts of Old Cumberland and 
Salem, from Burlington, Monmouth, and Mercer. The 



11 

men of Sussex, of Warren, of Hunterdon, of Passaic, 
of Essex, and of Union, are here. You have brought 
with you the rich products of your fields, the ingenious 
specimens of the skill and industry of the loved ones 
of your own homes and firesides, your choicest cattle 
and the fairest of your flocks ; together -with those 
numerous agricultural implements that modern inge- 
nuity has devised for easing the yoke of labor. You 
have come from your rural homes to this great festival, 
to exchange greetings with your brethren, to talk over 
the results of the last year's farming, to compare notes 
about this or that mode of culture, to examine criti- 
cally this or that improved stock; and to admire on 
every side the astonishing products which a generous 
soil, aided by experience and culture, has poured out 
in such rich abundance. 

And as, at the Grecian Olympiad, it was ever the 
custom to discourse upon the progress of civilization 
and humanity, so permit me, on this occasion, to take 
it as the theme of my discourse, so that in all things 
we may be said to imitate that ancient and most excel- 
lent festival. 

Each succeeding age and generation leaves behind it 
some peculiar characteristic, which stands out in bold 
relief upon its annals, and is associated forever with it 
in the memory of posterity. One age is signalized for 
the invention of gunpowder, another for that of print- 
ing. One is rendered memorable by the revival of let- 
ters, another by the reformation of religion. One 
epoch is made illustrious by the discoveries of a New- 
ton, another by the conquests of a Napoleon. If we 
were asked by what characteristic the present age will 
be marked in the records of its successors, we should 



12 

answer, — by the wonders that have been wrought in 
the subjugation of the material world to the uses and 
purposes of humanity, and its wonderful intellectual 
advancement. 

No one can contemplate our unexampled progress in 
this direction during the present century, without feel- 
ing that a new epoch has commenced in the history of 
our race. The divine powers of the human mind are 
extending their grasp, and rising to a state of higher 
activity ; fields of knowledge undreamt of in the ear- 
lier ages of the world are successfully cultivated ; the 
farthest regions of space are explored, and the secrets 
of their starry depths unfolded to men. The hidden 
forces of Nature, the laws by which her phenomena are 
governed in their endless variety and succession, the 
economy of being, the structure and properties of mat- 
ter, the relations of things and ideas, the very mind 
itself, — all are undergoing a rigorous process of scien- 
tific investigation, from which discoveries result that 
would be deemed miraculous, did not their number and 
frequency almost exhaust our faculty of wonder. 

The great characteristic of this general mind move- 
ment is its practical tendency. The age of the ancient 
schoolmen is over, and the public of our day expects 
from its thinkers and experimentalists not clever para- 
doxes, not ingenious puzzles carried on through an end- 
less chain of infinite questions and incomprehensible 
distinctions, but the best, the surest, and the shortest 
method of grappling with obstinate realities. The pub- 
lic mind demands from its experimentalists, discoveries 
of the means by which the powers of Nature may be 
brought to subdue one another, for the service of man 
in his ceaseless struggles with her material elements. 



13 

Learning and skill are esteemed only in proportion as 
they conduce to the well-being of society ; and their 
value is measured by the extent of their application to 
the practical affairs of every-day life. Philosophers 
have ceased to speculate, in retirement, upon unsub- 
stantial, air-drawn theories. Science is no longer an 
abstraction, floating dreamily above the heads of the 
multitude. It has descended to earth ; it walks with 
men ; it penetrates the bowels of the earth ; it enters 
our workshops ; it analyzes the soil upon our farms, 
and the constituents of the atmosphere above them; 
it traces the organic elements that enter into the com- 
position of our plants, and makes manifest how those 
elements are held together by a kind of balance of 
opposite attractions, which remain united only when 
that balance is retained. It speeds along with the iron 
courser of the rail ; it tramples on the billows ; it de- 
fies the tempest ; it gives to man the sunbeam for a 
pencil, and the lightning for a messenger. It lends to 
man's feeble arm an irresistible might, before which 
mountains crumble into dust, the barriers of kingdoms 
are removed, estuaries and straits spanned by substan- 
tial roadways, while the unstable waters, no less than 
the firm land, are made subject to his dominion. The 
talismans of Arabian fable never endowed their posses- 
sors with such power as that which science, in our age, 
has bestowed upon man. It has placed at his command 
agents whose indefatigable energy, and adaptation to 
all human wants and purposes, cast into the shade the 
Genii of the Hing and of the Lamp. 

What is there in the recorded dreams of fancy, more 
wonderful than the force and power of steam agency, 
as now developed in its various applications "? How 



14 

stupendous in its power, and yet how manageable ! A 
child may direct it ; it would crush an army. A sin- 
gle touch puts in motion the ship that can bear upon 
its deck the population of a city, or beneath can stow 
away the freightage of a nation's wealth. The rushing 
train, entrusted with a thousand lives, is checked by 
the motion of a single arm. The complicated ma- 
chinery that whirls, and groans, and labors through the 
town-like factory, may be set in motion or arrested by 
a touch. Tn one place you see it wielding a ponderous 
Nasmyth hammer of many tons weight, while forging 
the immense anchors that are to hold the huge levia- 
thans navigating our seas ; in another, polishing, be- 
yond the skill of human handiwork, the delicate hair 
spring that is to trace and record the noiseless progress 
of time. Here it is employed upon massive blocks of 
iron, which it rolls out, cuts up, and moulds, as the 
potter does his clay ; and here it is spinning threads so 
fine that they almost elude the sight, while it is weav- 
ing them into textures that look like wreaths of morn- 
ing mist. Unaffected by time, place, or climate, inca- 
pable of fatigue, there stands this universal servant of 
man, ready to relieve him from all drudgery, and to 
assist his limited ability in carrying out the intentions 
of his will. It matters not how difficult or varied the 
services required, or where they are to be performed. 
In the depths of the earth or on the mountain top, in 
the open field or in the crowded city, in the frozen 
nortli or at the burning tropics ; whether requiring the 
most gigantic strength or the nicest care, this wondrous 
agent is suited to them all. It enables man, who is 
slow and weak compared with other terrestrial crea- 
tures, to pass from place to place with all the speed of 



15 

the eagle, carrying burdens in his flight that would 
crush the strongest elephant into a shapeless mass. By 
its means the force and dexterity of a million fingers 
are subjected to the control of one mind, and imbued 
with its intelligence. Under the transforming touch of 
this wonder-working power, the rudest substances are 
made to assume shapes of beauty and utility. It gives 
instruments to the philosopher, tools to the artisan, and 
labor-saving machinery to the mechanic and agricul- 
turist. The frail vesture of the cotton seed, that once 
rested unnoticed where it fell, becomes clothing for 
nations ; and when it has answered all possible pur- 
poses, and been reduced to the state of filthy rags, 
which even the poorest beggar would reject, even this 
refuse-like matter is taken up, and by a magical pro- 
cess transmuted into fair pages, that are impressed with 
imperishable thoughts almost with the rapidity of 
thought itself — then distributed throughout the world. 
These are a few of the astounding results achieved in 
our day by the power of steam, — a power which 
remained latent so many ages in the impalpable vapor 
that has played before the eyes of man since the 
creation, but which it was reserved for our age to evoke, 
control, and subjugate. Science has taught us the spell 
by which the spirit of the mist has been conjured from 
its dark abode, to administer to our behests. In the 
glowing words of our own Webster, — " It now seems 
to say to men, at least to artisans — leave ofi" your man- 
ual labor, bestow but your skill and reason to the direc- 
tion of my power, and I will bear the toil, with no 
muscle to grow weary, with no nerve to relax, no breast 
to feel faintness." 

But even the subtle influences of caloric, which thus 



16 

animates the inert water with Titanic might, fails to 
excite our astonishment to so high a degree as those 
marvels recently produced by electrical agency. If the 
one unites lands and transports material objects, the 
other seems destined to become the link that shall 
unite the universal mind — the vital channel of intelli- 
gence and thought between all the habitable parts of 
the earth. As yet, we dare hardly venture to conjec- 
ture' the diverse forms this mysterious power is destined 
to assume, or the part it is yet to perform, in the future 
history of our planet. Some general ideas are all that 
we can fix upon as the basis of our speculations ; and 
even these are amongst the most astounding facts 
within the compass of human knowledge. They re- 
semble the operations of a spiritual rather than of a 
material agency. The Electric Telegraph has now be- 
come a familiar object. We look upon it with a care- 
less eye — we pass onward and forget how once we 
deemed its properties miraculous ; yet by it we see 
realized more than the beautiful fiction of Strada. Not 
between two minds alone does it establish a responsive 
sympathy, but it creates a communion of thought be- 
tween cities and kingdoms. It enables a man to utter 
his feelings at the very instant they arise in his mind 
to ears that listen for them thousands of miles away. 
It darts with lightning speed through realms of space, 
and as it darts communicates thought from man to 
man. With the rapidity of the electric flash, it 
equally speeds the messages of love, or the dread sum- 
mons which inexorable justice sends after its victim ; 
and when the murderer has fled from the scene of his 
crime on the wings of steam, that flash along the tele- 
graphic wire has overtaken him by a still speedier 



n 

messenger, ranging the officers of justice to seize him 
thousands of miles from the spot where the bloody 
deed was done. The enchanted horse of the Arabian 
magician, or the magic carpet of the German sorcerer, 
were poor contrivances compared with that agent which 
momentarily speeds along our telegraphic wires, and 
by which almost all the difficulties of time and space 
are overcome. 

Look at those wires, as they stretch along by our 
great railway lines. They appear perfectly quiescent. 
The weary bird rests upon them, and clasps them in its 
tiny claws. Yet along that motionless thread, and 
through that feeble grasp, there may be passing tidings 
of life or death, of ruin or prosperity, — intelligence of 
the fall of kings and thrones, of battles lost and won, 
of events that change the destinies of the world, — plung- 
ing whole nations into mourning, or intoxicating tliem 
with joy. A thousand fathoms beneath the keel of the 
war-ship, undisturbed by the tumult of the elements in 
which she reels and struggles, in the dark and silent 
abysses of ocean, where uncouth monsters hide, where 
human vision has never penetrated, and amid scenes 
that have been secret since the beginning of time — 
there shall lie the wondrous ligature connecting the 
minds of nations, conveying manifold contributions to 
the sum of human wisdom and experience, and from 
the humanizing operations of which man, shall learn to 
still his mimic thunders, and aspire after higher and 
brighter glories than those won by mutual slaughter on 
such gory fields as Magenta and Solferino. The fire 
that glides along this ligature shall scorch away the 
differences of race and nation, and men shall cease to 

learn war any more. This globe of ours must yet be 

2 



18 

transformed by tins wondrous agency into one vast 
human head; these magic wires, like interlacing 
nerves, universalizing and harmonizing every sensation 
and every thought. 

It was out of the passing whirlwind came the 
mysterious voice that asked of suifering Joh: "Canst 
thou send lightnings, that they may go and say unto 
thee, Here we are*?" The power denied to the. age in 
which the patriarch lived, has, for some wise purpose 
of the Infinite, been reserved for the men of this gener- 
ation, who have not only found out the path of the 
lightning, and can send it on its human mission, but, 
Prospero like, have caught, in passing, the Northern 
Ariels — those merry dancers of the skies — who light 
their torches in our Northern zone, and compelled 
even these " tricksy sprites" to do their bidding. 

But there is another power at work in our age, that 
incalculably transcends the power of electricity or of 
steam — an agency to which they are both ministering 
servants. It is that of mind itself — the prime mover 
and director of them all, defining their purposes, and 
controlling their operations ; that restless, indefatigable 
and inscrutable principle, to which the human frame 
is but an apparatus of exquisitely adjusted organs ; 
that intellectual power which as it thinks, and feels 
and wills, impels man to action, directs his movements 
and registers their results — which pushes its inquiries 
into every department of creation ; and with an insati- 
able thirst for knowledge, scans the mightiest opera- 
tions of Nature, and scrutinizes her minutest processes. 
It surveys the past, anticipates the future, and ever 
and anon turns in upon itself to observe its own move- 
ments, and conduct a marvellous analysis of which it is 



19 

itself at once the subject, the instrument and the per- 
former. 

In this great mind movement, by which our age is 
so peculiarly characterised, evinced in the rapid devel- 
opment of the hitherto unknown laws of Nature, and 
the successful application of those laws, so as to make 
them contribute to man's comfort and happiness, the 
Agriculturist has not been forgotten. 

Agriculture has become what Cicero vauntingly 
styled it in his day — " the nearest of all employments 
to the purely philosophical and scientific kind." It 
has in our day become a pursuit, which to prosecute to 
its full capacity, the arts and sciences of modern times 
must be made to bear upon it, and co-operate with it, 
so as to add something to its progression, or to apply 
beneficially the knowledge of its already established 
principles and practices. 

Science in descending from her high places in this 
age, has taken agricultural labor by the hand, that' 
they may walk together over the earth's surface and 
through the fields, while they search out " the causes 
of things." 

Geology in this wondrous age, reveals to the intelli- 
gent husbandman, that the solid earth whose surface 
he tills, which bears upon its stalwart breast the Cyclo- 
j)ean masonry of the granite and limestone mountains, 
was once held in aqueous solution, and its substance as 
impressible as the sand from which the ocean wave has 
just retired. She points him to the delicate markings 
the footprints and impressions of organic animal struc- 
tures, hardened in the solid rock, as proof of the once 
soluble condition of the earth. She builds up for him 
the great globe itself by a regular succession and con- 



20 

tinuity of strata, each presenting its own particular 
organisms, establishing the important fact that there 
has been a systematic and progressive succession of life 
in the ancient world ; and preserving as in some curi- 
ous museum the specimens of organic life, that existed 
at each period of deposition ; manifesting that God's 
power on the earth has not been limited to the few 
thousand years of man's existence. Geology counts 
the age of the earth not by celestial cycles, but by an 
index found in the solid framework of the globe itself. 
It points to a long succession of monuments, each of 
which may have required myriads of years for its elab- 
oration. It arranges them in chronological order, ob- 
serves in them marks of skill and wisdom, finds within 
them the vast cemeteries of the successive inhabitants 
of the earth, tracing the changes backward through 
successive eras of development, until the time, when " the 
earth was without form and void, and darkness rested 
upon the face of the deep." This brilliant science 
attests that man was the last of created beings in our 
planet. Through centuries and ages of creative activ- 
ity, there is not the faintest trace of his presence, his 
footsteps or his handiwork. In all the pages of this 
stony volume wherever it has hitherto been opened, 
there is no record of man. He is as absolute a stran- 
ger, as though he were not at this moment and never 
had been a denizen of this planet. But yet how sub- 
lime the thought, that here suggests itself of man's 
importance, and of a Creator's love, when the truth 
leaps forth from such scientific revelation, that all this 
creative energy and intelligence were exerted to pre- 
pare a fit habitation for the coming man. The flint 
of your mouutains, the red clay of your seashores, the 



21 

marl that fertilizes your fields, and makes them wave 
with a golden harvest ; the rich abounding treasury of 
your coal fields ; are but evidences of a divine fore- 
cast, that has thus deposited the remains of animal 
and vegetable life, which by gradual transformation 
and decomposition, were to minister for all time, to the 
wants of the coming ruler, who was "to have dominion 
over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the air, and 
over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every 
thing that creepeth upon the face of the earth." 

This noble science which thus tells the interesting 
story of the earth's past career, marking its epochs by 
revolutions, which have repeatedly submerged, elevated 
and dislocated its framework, has, in a remarkable de- 
gree, in our age made itself subservient to the great art 
of Agriculture. 

It shows this earth with its huge mass resting on its 
primary strata, where the granite and the gneiss, the 
limestone and the slate have their beds. It points to 
the transition period, when tropical vegetation, under 
the influence of tropical heat, gave birth to the ancient 
Flora of the earth, rank and luxuriant, whose decay ac- 
cumulated that vast amount of carbonaceous matter, now 
ministering so much to the comfort and prosperity of man 
— those immense coal deposits, out of whose subterra- 
nean treasure-house comes the substance that enlivens our 
hearthstones, prepares our food, furnishes light to our 
dwellings; and is fast becoming the essential agent of 
that mighty power of steam, upon which modern loco- 
motion, the increasing value of the products of our farms 
and manufactories so much depend. 

With unerring certainty geology points the agricul- 
turalist to that tertiary formation where the marine 



22 

strata are deposited, to which the rivers, lakes, floods 
and seas of the ancient world contributed. Here you 
find the grand depositories, where are stored the fat and 
unctuous marls and green sand, which have proved such 
efficient fertilizers of the soil in the alluvial districts of 
New Jersey. 

You come to the surface, to the soil you cultivate, 
and geological science shows you its derivation from 
the original primary rocks, which by convulsions, 
changes, and repeated disintegrations, has been the 
better fitted for the purposes of tillage and cultivation. 
It teaches the agriculturist how to tell the character of 
the outer soil from the rocks beneath it. In some 
places you meet with sand-stone, in other places lime- 
stone, in other, slate or hardened clay or rock. Hence 
your sandy soils, your clay and your calcareous soils : for 
it is almost certain that the upper soil has been formed 
from the crumbling or decay of the solid rocks beneath 
it. Thus, the modern intelligent agriculturist seeking 
a locality for settlement, by the aid of this useful 
science is now enabled to say — " By the geological struc- 
tures of this section of country, here, I shall have the 
more permanent productive soil ; here I am more within 
the reach of agricultural improvenlent ; here, in addi- 
tion to the riches of the surface, my descendants may 
hope to derive the means of wealth from the mineral 
riches beneath." 

But geology is not the only science, that in this 
remarkable age ministers to the wants and necessities 
of the agriculturist. 

Agricultural chemistry comes in, to teach him the 
nature of the various elementary constituents of bodies, 
and the laws which regulate their combination in the 



23 

inorganic and non- vital world : while animal and vege- 
table physiology instructs him in the constituents of 
organic or vital beings. Chemistry discloses to him 
the existence of deleterious gasses in the atmosphere, 
while vegetable physiology most beautifully demon- 
strates how the leaves of the plants are the lungs by 
which they breathe, and appropriate the carbonic acid 
of the atmosphere, which is retained and absorbed by 
them as part of their structure, while the oxygen so 
necessary to man's vitality, is excreted into the air by 
them as useless. So thus by an arrangement, whose 
wisdom is apparent, the vegetable and animal kingdom 
are made to contribute mutually to each other's sup- 
port. Nay, they are essential to each other's existence. 
Destroy the animal reign, and the vegetable will 
speedily perish for the want of its proper nutriment. 
Eradicate the vegetable cover of the earth, and the 
very air we breath, will lose that element by which 
life alone continues. 

Chemistry reveals how certain elements of the in- 
organic world contain nitrogen, phosphorus, soda and 
lime ; while vegetable physiology clearly demonstrates 
how the living organism of the plant, when these sub- 
stances, in the shape of natural or artificial manures, are 
brought to its roots, through these vegetable mouths 
drink in the liquid nourishment that the rains wash 
down, which by Nature's secret process goes to form 
stem, leaves and flowers. Vegetable physiology de- 
velops for the agriculturist the great truth, that as the 
blood is to the life of man, so the sap in vegetables is 
the vital current, the nourishing fluid which, circulating 
through their veins and arteries, is necessary for . the 
maintenance and increase of their frames ; and as this 



24 

nourishing fluid is being constantly consumed, and 
must receive fresh suppKes, agricultural chemistry re- 
veals the elements that enter into its formation. It 
analyzes the sap of the vegetable, and finds it to con- 
sist of all the elements, of which the individual plant 
is composed, while carbon, hydrogen and oxygen mate- 
rially enter into its formation. Then vegetable physio- 
logy most curiously makes manifest how plants derive 
all these gasses from the atmosphere, their carbon from 
its carbonic acid, their hydrogen from its moisture, and 
their nitrogen from the gleaming lightning, that shed- 
ding its lurid glare, during the passing thunder shower, 
gives down this important element, which coming in 
contact w^ith earth's organic substances, produces that 
vigor in vegetation, which is the certain accompani- 
ment of ths summer shower. So that in fact, the 
electric magazines of the skies, aided by earth's sub- 
stances, are continually engaged in the manufacture of 
those nitrates of potash, of soda, or of lime, that form 
such important ingredients in your best manures. 

In fact, the science of vegetable physiology may in 
truth be said to reveal to him who studies it in a pro- 
per spirit, the sublime and exalted mission of the whole 
vegetable economy ; which economy, singularly enough, 
though "of the earth, earthy," symbolizes in the im- 
mutable laws of vegetable life the spiritual ordinance 
of that which is yet to be in the great hereafter. It 
in truth makes manifest, 

"How Creation's soul is thrivance from decay, 
And Nature feeds on ruin ; the big earth 
Summers in rot, and harvests throiigh the frost, 
To fructify the world ; the mortal now 
Is pregnant with the spring-flowers of To-come ; 
And death is seed-time of Eterniti/." 



25 

It reveals how the immutable law of vegetable nature 
decrees that death shall proceed out of life, and life 
out of death ; that the living animal shall draw its 
vitality from the dead plant, and the living plant from 
the dead animal; that decomposition must be but the 
commencement of recomposition, and putrefaction the 
symbol of renewed production. The brave apostle to 
the Gentiles preaches this beautiful truth in that sub- 
lime passage which has so often comforted the stricken 
mourner, as, weeping over the grave of the beloved, 
he hears with wildly beating heart that fearful Mis- 
erere of the last service of the Church, ''Earth to 
earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust," — " But some will 
say, How are the dead raised up, and with what body 
do they come 1 Thou fool ! that which thou soivest is not 
quicJcencd^ except it die /" 

And is not this as well, the universal law that his- 
tory teaches in the progress of the political world 1 
Has not the dissolution of old forms of government 
been but a preparation for new phases of humanity \ 
Dynasties may die out, and forms of humanity be 
changed, but the great law of progress, of reconstruc- 
tion from decay, still urges humanity on ; and the ruin 
of states and empires becomes like the falling of the 
leaves in autumn, manuring the soil, and preparing it 
for the growth of richer vegetation and more abundant 
harvests. 

Nor is this wondrous truth of reconstruction from 
decay, the only marvel that reveals itself to the earnest 
student of vegetable physiology. Amongst the wondrous 
analogies disclosed by it in the animal and vegetable 
kingdom, none certainly are more astonishing than that 
curious discovery of sexes in the higher order of plants : 



26 

making manifest how, by the impregnation of the germ 
in the one sex, that germ is converted into a seed ; and 
how that seed, if placed in the ground in a condition 
where it can have health and support, becomes the per- 
fect plant. How singularly signiiicant, too, the revela- 
tion that in the flower of every plant rest these organs 
of reproduction. So that calm race, the flowers, all 
loveliness and tranquillity, whose life is beauty, and 
whose breath is perfume, play no idle part in Nature's 
w^orkshop ; for to them is in reality committed the task 
of perpetuating not only vegetable but animal life. 
Upon their active industry depends the life of every 
bird that soars in air, of the cattle on a thousand hills, 
of every insect that crawls in the dust, and of the life 
of man himself. As England's laureate poet asks : 

" Who is it that could live an hour, 
If Nature put not forth her power, 
About the opening of a flower?" 

Look, too, at the beautiful revelation vegetable phy- 
siology gives us of the superintending love that 
w^atches over all things, from the least to the greatest. 
See how kindly Nature, with a mother's instinctive love 
and tenderness, surrounds the germ, before it is sepa- 
rated from the parent flower, with nutritive matter — 
the starch, the gluten, and the albumen — which shall 
form its future food when the parent flower dies--the 
carpel splits, and the seed is free. And learn, too. 
Nature's ingenuity, when you note the little wing-like 
expansions on the sides of the new-born seed, that it 
may the more easily w^aft it to some distant place, 
where it is to lie, feeding on its own stores, until ex- 
posed to warmth and moisture, and the oxygen of the 



27 

air, it shall burst its seed coats, and commence its active 
existence. 

But the science of vegetable physiology stands not 
alone in the valuable contributions it has made to the 
art of the husbandman. Chemistry has already, as 
every intelligent farmer knows, advanced, with aston- 
ishing rapidity, the agricultural interests of the world. 

Chemistry, as a science, is of comparatively late 
origin; and how few there are, unless their attention 
is directed to it, who can fully realize the extent to 
which it has contributed to the comfort, prosperity, and 
luxury of the world. 

When, in the latter part of the last century, the 
focus of Priestly's burning lens evolved from the com- 
mon red precipitate of our apothecaries' shops bubbles 
of gas, identical with that which supports life, who 
could have supposed, that by freeing one of the metals 
from its companion element, the composition of many 
of the most useful ores would have been detected, and 
a hint furnished which was to bring the whole metal- 
lurgic art to a system of rigid and practical economy I 
Or who could have been presuming enough, when his 
nostrils first caught the suffocating odors produced by 
the German chemist's operations on the acid of sea- 
salt, to have then predicted that this discovery should 
introduce a total revolution in the manufacture of 
paper and linen textures, and a vast variety of objects'? 
Or when the chemists of the last century observed the 
discoloration and degradation which certain metallic 
salts underwent in the sunlight, who would have ven- 
tured on the prediction that the sun itself, in our day, 
should place a pencil in the hands of Daguerre and 
Talbot which should make the highest efforts of the 



28 

painter's skill, poor in the comparison'? Or when the 
French philosopher, not a half century ago, perceived 
the disturbance of the magnetic needle, produced by a 
neighboring galvanic current, who could have conceived 
that from this circumstance science should conjure 
up a sprite that would outstrip the fairy Oberon, " in 
putting a girdle round the earth in forty minutes 1" 

But great indeed as are unquestionably these contri- 
butions to the sum total of human comfort and pros- 
perity, we doubt whether in practical every-day useful- 
ness, they have not been equalled by those which 
chemistry has made to agriculture, and that, too, within 
a recent period. 

It is within the memory of most of us, when the 
application of this science to agriculture was first effi- 
ciently made. Why it was only the other day that 
Liebig made the first successful attempt to improve 
agricultural resources, when he suggested, on theoretic 
grounds alone, the addition of sulphuric acid to bones, 
as a means of rendering them when used more soluble, 
so that the spongioles of the thirsty plant might the 
more easily appropriate the liquid nourishment. 

But the intelligent farmer of to-day, who has learned 
through the developments of this science great and 
useful truths, truths of which he never dreamed before, 
is ready to acknowledge his indebtedness. He knows 
that with a knowledge of geology, vegetable physiology 
and chemistry, he is much better enabled to realize 
upon his farm the full advantages of its culture, from 
his acquaintance with the character of the soil, the or- 
ganism of plants, and the nature of the food that will 
best perfect that organism. 

The farmer of one idea, the man who, in this age, 



29 

despises book-farming, as he contemptuously calls it, is 
ever like the man with the muck rake in Bun y an, look- 
ing downward, and never wishing to extend the range 
of his vision. He is as one who is content to stick to 
the old Troy coach in preference to the many more cer- 
tain and expeditious modes of locomotion. Experience 
has done much and will do more for the farmer. But 
experience after all is but the dim glimpse of truth, 
like the religious faith that men had before a revela- 
tion. Experience did much for the age in which old 
Cato the Censor lived, and in his Agricultural Treatise 
he very properly enjoined on the young lloman farmer, 
" Beware of rashly contemning the usages adopted by 
others." This was good advice in the days of the stern 
old E-oman, and it is good advice now. But he who 
relies upon experience alone in this age, when the laws 
of science are unfolding truths that experience never 
revealed, will find himself going behind, and that pretty 
rapidly too. Oh, but the world got along very well 
without hook-farming many years ago. Yes, and so 
they did, for a time, without breeches or buttons ; and 
much longer without the printing press or the steam 
engine. 

As Henry Ward Beecher very pertinently says upon 
this subject: "A farmer never objects to receive politi- 
cal information from newspapers ; he is quite willing 
to learn the state of the markets from newspapers ; and 
as willing to gain religious notions from reading and 
historical knowledge, and all sorts of information, 
except that relating to his business. He will go over 
and hear a neighbor tell how he prepares his wheat 
lands — how he selects and puts in his seed — how he 
deals with his grounds in Spring — in harvest — and 



30 

after harvest time ; but if that neighbor should write 
it all down carefully, and put it into print, it's all poison ! 
it's hook farming r 

" Strange, such a difference there should be 
'Twixt tweedledum and tweedledee." 

Let me enumerate in brief, for time warns me 1 must 
not trespass much longer on your attention, the bene- 
fits that have resulted to agriculture by the develop- 
ments of chemistry. 

It has taught the agricultural world the value of sub- 
stances for manures, which heretofore have been 
deemed worthless. It has shown why plants grow 
upon a soil that is well manured, because such manure 
has added to the soil the elements that enter into the 
structure of plants, — nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, 
potash, soda, and magnesia. It has taught the agricul- 
turist that when the natural manures fail, artificial 
compounds may be resorted to, giving to the soil and 
the plant something in which the first was deficient, 
and the latter was craving for its nourishment. It has 
taught the characteristic distinction between animal 
and vegetable manures, — that the former contains a 
much larger proportion of nitrogen than the latter ; 
and instructs you how to best treat animal manure, so as 
to hold and preserve that nitrogen, or the volatile am- 
monia which decay evolves from it, and upon which 
most of its virtue depends. 

Chemical analysis, perhaps, will show you that your 
soil is deficient in sulphur or in soda. Guided by this, 
you apply a top dressing of sulphate of soda to your 
wheat, and the full grain in the ear almost bends to the 
earth with its weight. You find that the land you are 



31 

about to lay clown in grass is deficient in nitrogen ; you 
top dress it with a preparation of nitrate of soda, and 
a rich, luxuriant crop greets the advent of your sweep- 
ing scythe. 

The intelligent husbandman who spreads lime upon 
his land, through the revelations of agricultural chem- 
istry is aware that, by this means, he goes through the 
very process a chemist resorts to in his laboratory to 
analyze the soil; he liberates the silica, the potash, and 
the phosphates, which enable these substances the 
better to mingle with the soil, and administer to the 
demands of vegetation. 

And he learns further, that by this liming process, 
he has furnished no equivalent for that removed by 
the crops ; and unless he restores to the soil what the 
lime has evolved, his frequent liming will only burn 
up and exhaust it. He learns, perhaps what he never 
dreamed of before, that lime is not in the ordinary 
sense, a manure, for manuring consists strictly in the 
restoration of that to the soil in which it is deficient. 
But lime is a robber, and the farmer who works slo- 
venly and ignorantly, contentijag himself with the fre- 
quent liming, will find its constant depredations will 
leave his soil poor indeed. 

Already the system of scientific cultivation is being 
guided and directed materially by the light of chemistry. 
By taking advantage of varieties produced naturally, by 
endeavoring to produce others by art, and forming 
hybrids, an immense number of varieties have been 
brought into existence, each possessing peculiarities of 
great interest and importance. On the maritime cliff's 
of England there existed a little plant with a fusiform 
root, smooth leaves, and a flower similar to that of the 



32 

wild mustard, with a saline taste. By scientific culti- 
vation there have been produced from that insignificant 
and useless plant, all the brocolis or kales, at least a 
dozen varieties, all the cabbages that head, all the 
early savoys, and the whole family of turnips. Now, 
although it is not fair to suppose that cultivation can 
ever produce from a single plant so many varieties as 
have sprung from this brassica, much is being done, 
and much more can be done in this direction. Scien- 
tific cultivation, aided by chemistry, is now bending all 
its energies to produce varieties which shall extract as 
much as possible from the soil in the shortest possible 
time ; in other words, varieties richest in nutritive mat- 
ter, coming speediest to maturity. 

Formerly, when the supply of manure was limited, 
the agriculturist had no motive, or scarcely any, of pro- 
ducing such varieties. The varieties he already pos- 
sessed absorbed from the soil all the nutritive elements 
of the manure he had to give it, and as fast as he could 
furnish it. Now, however, artificial manures promise 
to give an unlimited supply, and the case is difterent. 

Agricultural chemistry has further revealed to you, 
that the drought, when the earth is parched and vege- 
tation dwarfed and withered by the heat, is only an 
afiGliction for the present, a blessing in disguise for the 
future. That the early and the latter rain may pro- 
duce at once abundant crops, but dry weather is needed 
to bring to the surface from the depths of the earth 
food for the future harvest. That as the drought con- 
tinues, the water from the sub-soil keeps constantly 
bringing to the surface the salts of lime, of magnesia, 
or of potash that it holds in solution. Thus we are 



33 

tau«rlit to see in the drouth one of Nature's ordinances 
for keeping up the fertihty of the soil. 

The management and tilling of the soil has now got 
to be a branch of practical chemistry, which like the 
art of dyeing, or of lead smelting, may advance to a 
certain degree of perfection, without the aid of pure 
science ; but which can only have its processes ex- 
plained, and be led on to shorter, more simple, more 
economical, and more perfect processes by the aid of 
scientific principles. 

Nearly a century ago, a Scotch mother, according to 
Sir Walter Scott, objected to her sons using what she 
called a new-fangled machine for dighting the grain 
from the chaff, thus impiously raising wind by human 
art, instead of soliciting it by prayers. We wonder 
what this good old Scottish mother would have thought, 
if she could have been spared to our times ; and her 
wondering eyes could behold in our age the increasing 
triumphs of mind over matter, and the subjugation of 
the physical elements to an intellectual sovereign. 
Surely, if in any department, man has sought out many 
inventions, it has been in the department of agricul- 
ture. With your patent horse-hoes and patent drills, 
with your steam ploughs, your centre draft ploughs for 
sand soils, and for clay soils, with your side-hill and 
sub-soil ploughs, your reaping, mowing and threshing 
machines, your revolving wheel and hay rakes, "and 
your patent sowing and planting machines, you have a 
mass of labor-saving machinery, that must excite the 
wonder of the farmer who tilled the land a quarter of 
a century ago. 

Such are the wonders of the remarkable age in 
which we live, such liave been the contributions made 



34 

by science to Agriculture. Living then in so progressive 
an age, it is hardly necessary for me to say, that it is 
the duty of all classes in an agricultural State like New 
Jersey, to gain by every means within their power the 
full amount of benefits placed within their reach. 
We have been heaving, to-day, the log into the deep, 
and measuring the rapidity of the current, by which the 
world is borne along. You cannot stop that current if 
you would, and you ought not if you could. Neither can 
you stand idly by, trusting to the strength of the 
ancient moorings, by which your vessel is made fast ; 
for against such a current, the stoutest cables will give 
way, the strongest vessel drag her anchors, and be lost 
among the shallows. Your duty, and the duty of all of 
us, is to strive to turn in the best direction, the current 
which 'is carrying us forward, opening for it a free 
course into regions where it is most needed, rejoicing 
as we see it fertilizing the material and intellectual 
waste places. 

Farmers of New Jersey ! your lines indeed have fallen 
upon pleasant places ; yours is a goodly heritage. Like 
" the children of the Promise," " you have been brought 
into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of foun- 
tains and depths, that spring out of valleys and hills, 
a land wherein thou canst eat bread without scarce- 
ness, thou canst not lack any thing in it^a land whose 
stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou may est dig 
brass." 

And the same Almighty power which gave you this 
goodly land to possess it, has blest the fruit of your 
land, your corn, and your wine, and your oil, and the 
increase of your kine, and your flocks of sheep. 

From your alluvial districts, where kindly Nature 



35 

has laid np for you the fertilizing treasures that have 
so enriched your fields, to the chain of noble high- 
lands that skirt your northern line, rich in their varied 
mineral deposits — from your seaboard, w^here the At- 
lantic dashes w^ith sullen roar, to where the waters of 
our own Delaware glide murmuringly along — there is 
no land in all our widespread confederacy that can 
siu'pass it, in the value of its fertile acres, the genial 
nature of its skies, or its abounding capability to meet 
the great and growing wants of the mighty future 
that is opening before it. 

It is a land with rich and verdant meadows smiling 
beneath its pleasant skies — with grain-fields ripening 
for harvests, that fill to the full its groaning wains 
and bursting granaries — with orchards bending to the 
earth with their russet brown and golden fruitasfe — 
and a soil containing those fertilizing elements that 
have already made garden-spots of its waste places, 
and shall yet make its " barrens" to rejoice and blos- 
som like the rose. 

It is a land of which I may exclaim, as I glance 
over it with pride, in the words of the Scottish song, 
slightly altered : 

"The heath waves wild upon her hills ; 

And foaming f)-ae the fells 
Her fountains sing of freedom yet, 

As they dance down the dells. 
And well I lo'e the land, my lads, 

That's guarded by the sea: 
Then Jersei/'s dales, and Jersefs vales, 

And Jersey^ s hills for me ; 
We'll drink a health to Jcrseij yet, 

Wi' all the honors three." 

Such, Jersey Farmers, is the lot of your inheritance, 



36 



and I cannot better close than in those eloquent and 
earnest words of the late Bishop of New Jersey : " It 
is your heritage, and it is for you to own the fulness of 
the debt of grateful love by the discharge of your high 
duties to God, your country, and the generations yet 
to come, that it majj he to you an heritage for cverT 



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